if you can read this, you're literate

i just got back from mountain biking with the wonderous Phillip Crow.

here's what i've learned...

i like to get dirty. if there's a puddle, i'm aiming for it. every time.

i'm extremely out of shape. sitting behind a desk has made me weak and flabby.

but even though my lungs were burning inside, and i had that thick coat of saliva covering my mouth, it was still a good time. phil saw deer, i got muddy, and the forest was a beautiful shade of orangish-yellow.

thank GOD for trees! (and mud)

Posted by erichapman at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments

i love tents. i spent thursday putting mine up, and saturday cleaning it and taking it down.

i bought this tent earlier this summer to go camping with the nexus crowd. and i never slept in it. i had done the habitat for humanity build thur and friday, and i was suppossed to do it that saturday, too.

needless to say, after putting up a freaking house in a day, and other random stuff the next, i didn't need to sleep on the ground and wake up early the next day to just go work more on a house i'm not living in.

i slept in the a/c that night.

as it turns out, no one slept in it anyway. they just stayed up all night long.

then, the next time the nexus crowd got together to camp, i had to work (of course. CURSE YOU SECOND SHIFT!!!), so i wasn't there to sleep in my tent.

so i finally put up the tent this past week. only to realize it's far too COLD now to sleep outside. especially one person in a 7 man tent big enough for me to stand upright in.

anyway, my point being... i still loved that tent. it better get a LOT more use. if anyone's reading this, and enjoys camping, contact me. cuz i'm this close to living out of a tent.

Posted by erichapman at 3:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

ok, so this is three days in a row now. how can Fischer do this??? i wasn't going to blog about this, but then Charlie Dean sent me an e-mail saying, "what about today's Fischer express quote???"

so here it is...

"Religion is a guy in church thinking about fishing. Spirituality is a guy out fishing thinking about God."

i love that quote. you might as well save me some blogging time and go here and sign up for yourself.

but back to the quote... i recently had a discussion with someone about this. she had grown up in church her whole life, but it meant practically nothing. i love how she put it...

"in the car on the way home, we'd be fighting and screaming at each other like we hadn't just left church."

sounds like they were all thinking of fishing while they were in church.

Posted by erichapman at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments

most of the time, these devotionals are just another blog. this guy gets an idea and it sounds good to him, and he's got a quota to fill anyway, so might as well blog it and call it a devotional. oh, and occasionally quote something from The Good Book.

but sometimes, he's dead on. which, i'm happy to say, is more and more often. (usually when he's not saying "pooooooor hurricane victims. i'm topical!")

today was a good one...

"True righteousness is something that can only come from Christ, and it comes through the admission of our own unrighteousness and a total dependence upon God to make us clean. What He wants is way beyond us and we cannot begin any real growth without realizing this. Our goodness comes through faith in what Christ has done for us on the cross in forgiving our sins and in giving us His Spirit. It is that Spirit that begins to work on our insides, changing us from the inside out, and the good that comes from this is so clearly outside our ability to manufacture it as to leave us as surprised as anyone."

this section particualrly interested me since i've been thinking a lot lately about forgiveness and repentantnce. it kinda clears that up a bit.

the other section the he wrote was right at the end (usually the last paragraph is the best part...)

"Did Jesus endure a brutal death on a cross just so he could hand us a crutch to help us along? I don’t think so. We weren’t just stumbling along without Jesus; we were dead. Christianity isn’t a crutch; it’s an iron lung. It’s a cure for cancer. It’s a heart transplant."

powerful stuff. Jesus' death wasn't to just make us feel better... it was a life-saver.

Posted by erichapman at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments

i just created a new word. it's taken from an acronym B.A.W. it stands for "bored at work." whenever you are "bored at work," use "baw" now. it shouldn't have any problem catching on.

it just seems like there are so many times when i'm baw that it warranted its own phrase. after my last debacle "what's zeroing down?" from the smash show ed fell through, i've been slow to release new phrases for the english language. but this is a good one!

feel free to spread the baw everywhere.

p.s. i've been baw for a long, long time now.

Posted by erichapman at 9:42 PM | Permalink | Comments

I just got done reading my daily devotional from Purpose Driven Life and stubled across something extremely quotable from John Fischer.

"All our relationships are vital. God made us this way. Don’t miss the value of the people in your life today. Don’t wait to stumble on a yearbook to appreciate them. Appreciate them now. They are eternal, just like you."

I had never heard of PDL until Megan asked me one time, "Hey, Eric... Do you have A Purpose Driven Life?"

I thought she was starting a philosophical discussion at 2 o'clock in the AM while I was putting her new computer desk together. Turns out it's a book.

Anyway... back to the quote... I can be a little anti-social at times... But I find I'm happiest around my friends. And just getting a simple invite to hang out, or a few people waiting around for me to get done packing up at church can really give me a special feeling. And the anti-socialness seems to dissolve into nothing.

So, thank you, friends, for being friends. God has made us friends and put us in each others' lives for a reason.

Posted by erichapman at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments

normally i would keep names out of it and keep all parties annymous, but i just need you to see why this pastor needs prayer.

pray

he needs it. this is a man who thinks he's a high schooler. grown men do not act like this.

have you ever heard of a pastor who refuses to let someone he claims needs the Lord's grace into a church?

think about that, and think about what right and wrong is. i don't care who was right or wrong. as far as i'm concerned, both sides need to swallow their selfish pride.

but a pastor pushing someone away from the church?

pray for pastors, pray for human kind, pray for the kids who won't find a church home, pray for Christians.

Posted by erichapman at 4:34 AM | Permalink | Comments

a while back (in the heat of the moment), i saw a jerry lewis-esque show on public tv for the gulf coast victims of hurrican katrina.

first off, i gotta say how much i hate shows like this. put famous people on tv for 3 minutes at a time to make it seem like they care. wow. i'm moved. these celebs are going to forget the name of the hurricane they sang and did serious skits about under spotlights and stage fog in a month.

and if they wanted to make a difference, why aren't they rebuilding houses? oh that's right... that would mean they have to SPEND money instead of MAKE it by appearing on television. (i realize it's a "non-profit appearance" and they don't get paid for doing the song and dance, but they get more recognition, which sells more cds, dvds, t-shirts and coffee mugs.)

back to the original topic... randy newman really does just sing about what's in front of his face. i can't imagine his "creative process" being more than him, a piano, a pen and notepad, and a chair that swivels in all directions so newman can simply view his surroundings.

the following is more than a snippet from his opening song for this show, in fact, it's almost the entire song;

clouds roll in from the north and it starts to rain
rain real hard and rain for real long time
six feet of water in the streets of a evangeline
river rose all day river rose all night
some people got lost in the floodsome people made it out alright

louisiana
louisiana

they're tryin to wash us away
they're tryin to wash us away
(repeat)

i won't even get to the part where he sings about "little fat man" coolidge.

i hope it goes to cd so people can compare it to william hung.

Posted by erichapman at 1:50 AM | Permalink | Comments

i got addicted to myspace again. great. now i waste all sorts of time. and my fish are out of food. so i myspaced for 3 hours instead of feeding them.

someone send help! S.O.S!

oh, and Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story is great. I'm watching it now with commentary on. worth the money. oh yeah... i didn't pay for it. so it's worth rob at work's money!

Posted by erichapman at 1:12 PM | Permalink

today has been maybe the crappiest day of my week-long vacation yet.

i found out that my truck is only worth 8,000 dollars for trade-in value. (which i'm trying not to let it make me mad... stupid dealerships!) and i just put my harley up for sale on the tradin' post.

i've had it for a year. a year this week, actually and i will miss it. but, i just realized that it may make me feel like crap, but it's the mature thing to do. i shouldn't have to eek by just so i can afford a motorcycle i only rode less than four thousand miles in a year.

at least i bought smart and got a harley. i'll sell it for a little less than i origonally paid for it. so, i might have a couple extra thousand laying around. i haven't decided if i'm going to invest that, or pay off a credit card. paying off the credit card would the the safe route... but i could actually MAKE money if i started selling cars with my cousin on his lot.

money money money. that's what it all boils down to. at times, i wish i lived more simply. w/o so many posessions.

every time i get something "nice," i always think, "there... i'm good now. i don't have to spend more." but what i'm not telling myself is, "...for a while."

something else always comes along. if i started right now, i could come up with one thing i "need" each day from now til Christmas. and of course, THAT would make me happy.

the root of all evil IS the love of money.

whether it's hoarding all your money, or spending it to get "stuff," it's evil.

Posted by erichapman at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments

i was given a gift out of the kindness of someone's heart. and it's someone i look up to. someone i respect. and someone respects me back. and is thankful for the little bit i can do.

it seems that a simple gift has affected me greatly. and a simple act on my part is what started it all in the first place.

call is selfish, call it petty. call it karma. but it just puts life into perspective. one good deed rippling out...

Posted by erichapman at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments